I did it pie way ...
There must be easier ways of researching a book than travelling through India by train and cooking British food for people. After all, the subcontinent is known for its spice-laced dishes and culinary diversity. Why would a group of Delhi socialites be interested in eating bland, mashed potato-topped mince whipped up by a Glaswegian Sikh who has just stepped off a train with no ingredients and a bad dose of Delhi belly? It's a question Hardeep Singh Kohli asked himself more than once during his cooking, sightseeing and self-discovery odyssey around the country of his forebears.
Kohli is a British-based journalist and current affairs commentator and a minor celebrity on his home turf. A regular on BBC radio and television and with a column in a Scottish Sunday newspaper, he considers the weighty issues, such as the challenges of growing up in a minority in Britain, as well as lighter but no less important questions, such as declining dress standards among the British (shell suits and Burberry caps). He is well placed to explore both topics because he was born in Glasgow in 1969 and was regularly referred to as a 'darkie' at school. And he rarely appears on television in anything less than a brightly coloured suit and matching turban - of which he has almost 40.
His latest incarnation as the author of Indian Takeaway: One Man's Attempt to Cook His Way Home, was not born of a decision to pursue a new career path as a writer. To listen to him explain events, his first book appears to be the by-product of time spent soul searching - albeit with some cooking thrown in.
'I'm a storyteller, one way or the other. If I wasn't working in telly, radio, books and newspapers I'd be the drunk at the end of the bar wanting to tell you a joke,' he says. 'So I don't really see why I should compromise the vehicles for my work because it's handy and tidy for an industry to know what I do for a living. I don't do what I do for the industry - I do it for the end user. So I don't make TV for TV executives, I make it for the viewers at home. Similarly for radio, the newspaper column and the book. I want to make decisions based on whether I want to do the work, not whether I'm defined as a broadcaster or writer. I understand that makes life slightly difficult for me, because people want to put you in a box. But I'm too old now to do things I don't want to do.'
Indian Takeaway traces Kohli's journey from Kovalam, in India's south, to Ferozepure, the birthplace of his father, in the north. The trip was partly inspired by the belief that his 75-year-old father, 'the big fella' to whom the book is dedicated, would be pleased with his son's journey and by Kohli's love of food.
As it happened, on revealing his intention to travel through India cooking British food for locals, his father handed out some less than encouraging words of wisdom: 'Son, if British food was all that good then there would be no Indian restaurants in Britain.'
I meet Kohli at his hotel in Edinburgh. He is in town to do something with BBC Radio Scotland, but he's not sure what. It's his second appointment of the morning and we decide to find a comfortable spot in the lounge because he has spent the past hour in a straight-backed chair eating breakfast. He seems jaded with the whole work thing and doesn't sound enthusiastic about having spent the past 19 years working in the media.
But he becomes more animated when the discussion turns to food (he was a finalist on BBC television's cooking competition programme Master Chef) and how the book enabled him to indulge his twin passions for travel and cooking. Indian Takeaway is hard to categorise. It begins with food and ends, one assumes, with Kohli achieving some kind of closure - of what it's difficult to tell. But it's all delivered with a huge dollop of good humour, not least because what starts out with good intentions falls flat on its face: from the off, Kohli is unable to find any of the ingredients (or willing diners) for his Scottish stovies, toad-in-the-hole or fish and chips.
'[Lack of ingredients] mattered a great deal more before I set out on the journey, when it was going to be much more a book about food,' he says.
'I didn't think there'd be quite so much self-discovery and reminiscing, but very often the process informs the product and you could never guess how the book was going to turn out.
'I know the faults, but equally I know what's right with it. I've done enough readings now to know that it's entertaining and funny and it makes people think and it's not a complicated book to read. So I know what I've done right. But I couldn't have thought that when I started,' he says. 'Can you imagine, I spent 31/2 months travelling in India ... What does that do to people at the best of times, let alone when they're writing a book?'
Another level on which the book strikes a chord is that of his journey through contemporary India to his spiritual home.
'I came away feeling more British because I realised India is vast. If I have claim to any part of it it's a small part and even that is tenuous,' he says.
'I feel great heritage links to it, but my sensibilities are Scottish and British - this is where I was born and brought up and this is where I have spent the majority of my life.'
Kohli's journey helped him reaffirm who he is and where he really comes from. It's not an easy journey for anyone to make - even less so on a hard bench seat with a recipe for shepherd's pie.
Indian Takeaway: One Man's Attempt to Cook His Way Home by Hardeep Singh Kohli, Canongate, HK$255
